Aimé Mpane's layered, sculptural, rainbow-hued portraits of people in his native Congo evoke multiple associations - among them, modernists like Picasso who took inspiration from African art - though multinational corporations don't immediately come to mind. So in "IC.Cont #65," when the Nike swoosh slashes across a boy's forehead - resembling an insidious kind of branding - the effect jars.

The artist, 45, ties the juxtaposition to a web of oppression and expression in a country where, under Mobutu Sese Seko (who died in 1997), jackets and ties were forbidden and superstar musicians like Papa Wemba presented a well-dressed image.

"Manifesting a symbol of presence, having an obsession with being watched and recognized, being respected was part of the process of existing and being" in his homeland, Mpane e-mails, with help from a translator, from Brussels. "This idea influenced all of the subsequent generations and social classes. This tendency persist still today.

"Particularly, I am against this idea. Today, it makes no sense for a country this poor. It's still the manipulation of the media profiting a certain class, pushing people to consume and to be consumable."

A: Living between two cultures and countries, the Congo and Belgium, my artwork is based on interactions between the north and the south and my reaction to stereotypes on Africa and black-skinned people. My artwork is fundamentally based on identity and wounds in the Congolese memory.

"A Dual Perspective" as a theme seemed interesting to me because it touches directly on my identity and my vision of life. I navigate between two cultures permanently.

Q:How familiar are you with your subjects?

A: I don't know them all very well, but they are people who I have come across in common places in Kinshasa (Congo's capital). For some of the artwork, the model poses - I sculpt them. It's a unique experience at that precise moment of creation, like it is a performance. This performance pushes me to continue these portraits. It's also a way to leave a trace of an existence.

Q:Why do you work in wood?

A: I saw my grandfather and my father working in wood - it's my primary material. When I make the individual portraits, I use a piece of wood that is 0.0992 square meters - this is the equivalent of 32 by 31 centimeters. It's the surface of skin on the human head, excluding the folds in the ears, nose or mouth. Because my work deals with problems of race and the stereotypes of black people, the three layers within 4-millimeter-thick plywood make me think of the three layers within human skin.

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